Vehicle-Repossession Firms Using High-Tech Devices

Financial firms are using new technologies in their repossession efforts.

For instance, RecoveryTech Inc., a Texas firm, sells a dash-mounted camera device that is programmed to detect license plates of wanted vehicles.

“It helps if you are going through a parking lot filled with cars,” says Rod Arends, World Omni's assistant vice president-collections. “As soon as it recognizes the vehicle in question, the device does a GPS track.”

Conversely, at the front end of an auto loan, financed vehicles are sometimes rigged with GPS locator and starter-interrupt equipment.

“It's great technology, but there are legal issues,” Arends says. “The early devices just cut off the engines. That could happen if someone were going down the freeway.

“But the GPS devices are great,” he says. “One located a car in a marijuana field. It would never have been found otherwise.”